Free! The Final Stroke Debuts Trailer and Poster

Free! Iwatobi Swim Club has been quiet for some time now, but the series is slated to make its final comeback shortly. Kyoto Animation has been working hard on the IP in the wake of its tragic 2019 arson, and the time has come to show fans what the studio has in store. The first poster and trailer for Free! The Final Stroke is here, and it will have fans of the series all sorts of emotional.

The two-part movie, which will debut in Japan this September, plans to explore the final moments of the Free! franchise. The film’s poster shows all of our top characters as Haru and his friends look towards a bright future. After the film’s first installment goes live this fall, they can expect Free! to finish the story in April 2022. And when the second-half goes live, that will be the end of the anime as fans know it.

As you can imagine, the end of Free! Iwatobi Swim Club is hard to accept for fans, but the franchise has been around for quite some time. Kyoto Animation brought the series to life back in 2013. The show was loosely based on the High Speed! light novels by Koji Oji, but the series has taken a life of its own. After debuting in 2013, Free! Iwatobi Swim Club has put out three television seasons, and there will be a total of six films before the series comes to a close.

If you are not caught up with Free! Iwatobi Swim Club, you can watch the anime through Crunchyroll. The show’s official synopsis can be read here: “Nanase Haruka loved to be in the water – loved swimming. In elementary school, Nanase Haruka, Tachibana Makoto, Matsuoka Rin, and Hazuki Nagisa attended the same swimming class together. Time passed, and as Haruka was living an uneventful high school life, he suddenly encountered Rin again. Rin challenged Haruka to a race and showed him how much stronger he had become. Soon enough, Makoto and Nagisa also rejoined the group, and along with a new classmate, Ryugazaki Rei, they established the Iwatobi High School Swimming Club.”

What do you make of this first look at the final Free! movie? Will you be checking out this out ASAP? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB.